Riverside’s Korea Town was historic, but was it first?

Share this:

From left, Carol Park, Edward Chang and Myung Ki Hong stand near the site of Riverside's Korea Town, also known as Pachappa Camp, which they believe is the first organized Korean American settlement in the U.S.

Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, who helped lead Korea's independence movement in the early 1900s, spent a number of years in Riverside, where he educated and organized the Korean American community.

Sound

The gallery will resume inseconds

Members of Riverside's Korean community stand in front of what is believed to have been the community center at Pachappa Camp in Riverside in 1911. The building no longer exists, but supporters want the former camp designated as a city point of cultural interest.

It sits next to a noisy railroad line and is occupied by industrial yards with fences topped by razor wire.

But with the help of Korean independence leader Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, supporters say, in the early 1900s it became the first organized Korean American settlement in the continental United States.

They’re now asking Riverside to recognize Korea Town, also known as Pachappa Camp, as a city point of cultural interest.

The site at Cottage and Commerce streets near downtown is not eligible to become a historic landmark because no original buildings or other structures remain.

It has long been known that Korean immigrants lived in Riverside in the early 20th century, but until recently no one had tracked down details of the settlement, said UC Riverside ethnic studies professor Edward Chang, who leads the university’s Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies.

The center is leading the push for city recognition of Korea Town.

“We are kind of uncovering the buried past of the Korean diaspora,” Chang said. “We want to set the record straight that Riverside served as not only the first Korean settlement,” but also a hub of the Korean independence movement through its link with Ahn Chang Ho.

The claim is not without controversy.

Though Ahn’s only living son supports it, major opposition has come from Ahn’s grandson, Philip “Flip” Cuddy. He has ridiculed the scholarship behind the Riverside proposal and said other cities had earlier settlements.

ORGANIZED COMMUNITY

Koreans began migrating to the U.S. around the turn of the century seeking work, as Chinese and Japanese laborers had. Southern California offered jobs in citrus groves and packinghouses as well as in restaurants, shops and private homes.

Federal laws restricting Chinese immigration opened the market to other foreign workers, but citrus labor in Riverside was controlled mainly by two Japanese contractors, who hired their own countrymen, former Riverside Metropolitan Museum director Vince Moses said.

That’s where Ahn Chang Ho – also known by his pen name, Dosan – was able to help.

In 1902, Ahn came to San Francisco as a young man, planning to improve his English and study America’s democratic system of government. At the time, Korea was coming increasingly under the control of Japan, which formally annexed it in 1910.

After moving to Riverside two years later, Ahn found Pachappa Camp occupied by about 60 or 70 laborers, a few of which were accompanied by wives and children, Moses said. He helped them organize socially and politically, creating rules for the settlement and spearheading the building of a community center where residents learned English and area churches established Korean missions.

Ahn also impressed business magnate Cornelius Rumsey, who agreed to put Koreans to work in his citrus groves if Ahn would teach them how to pick and pack the fruit without damaging it.

In explaining how to carefully handle oranges and pay attention to detail, Ahn also taught Korean immigrants how to conduct themselves respectably in their new home, Moses said. What he learned about democratic society and his experience organizing a community figured heavily into his later work for Korean independence.

“He inspired all the Koreans at that time,” said Myung Ki Hong, chairman of a foundation that raised money for a downtown Riverside monument to Ahn that was dedicated in 2001. “Dosan actually educated Korean orange pickers to pick an orange with dedication.”

Even during his Riverside years, Ahn traveled often, and he eventually left the U.S. to continue his activism in China and Korea. Laborers living in Pachappa Camp began moving away – many went to Los Angeles and San Francisco – after the “Great Freeze of 1913,” which devastated Inland citrus groves, Moses said.

FIRST OR NOT?

By the 1950s, the settlement’s wooden buildings – about 30 of them, according to an old insurance map – were all gone. Today, the land is owned by Sempra Utilities and Mobil Oil Corp.

Chang, the UCR professor, said he started looking into the history of Riverside’s Korea Town a few years ago after coming across an old article making a case that it was the first in the continental U.S. He found old church records listing Korean members, Korean-language news clippings that mention the camp, and Korean settlers’ headstones in Riverside’s Evergreen and Olivewood cemeteries.

Until recently, Riverside had no way to recognize the settlement because no physical traces were left, city Historic Preservation Officer Erin Gettis said. But in August, the city created “points of cultural interest” as a new designation for just such historic sites, which will be marked with a sign in the public right-of-way.

The big question is whether Riverside’s Korea Town was really the first.

Gettis and those involved with the Pachappa Camp recognition say they’re not aware of another community claiming that distinction, though Moses noted that some of the earliest Korean immigrants worked on plantations in Hawaii and most coming to the U.S. mainland entered through San Francisco.

Supporters say Riverside’s Korea Town is unique because it was more than just a labor camp. Residents participated in local church activities and held their own cultural events such as weddings and baptisms. Ahn played a key role in organizing the community, they say.

A June discussion of recognizing Pachappa Camp at Riverside’s Cultural Heritage Board drew letters of support from Dosan’s youngest son, Ralph Ahn; Key Cheol Lee, Korea’s consul general in Los Angeles; and several Inland Korean organizations.

The main opposition to the proposal is from Cuddy, the son of Dosan’s oldest daughter, Susan.

In numerous emails to the city, he wrote that either San Francisco or Dinuba, Calif., would have a better claim as the first Korean U.S. settlement. And he suggested Riverside’s move is a a ploy to “add a stop for Korean tour guides to bilk money out of ignorant gullible people.”

Moses said it can be hard to prove something is definitively the first or earliest of its kind, so it may be safer to call it one of the first.

“I don’t think you’d have to reach that far … to establish that this is a significant site,” he said.

Supporters say Korea Town also stands out as a part of Riverside’s long history of multiculturalism.

Remembering that people don’t need to fear other nations and cultures is especially important in today’s divisive political climate, said Carol Park, a researcher at the Young Oak Kim Center.

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?